A friend of mine at the gym at school got sponsored not too long ago. He does physique stuff (hasn’t actually competed, but is still jacked enough to pick up a sponsorship. Pretty legit), so we come to a discussion with totally different paradigms. He has helped me a lot with “feeling” muscles that don’t seem to want to fire properly, and I help him with approaching strength-based programming. It’s a surprisingly productive relationship for a commercial gym.

He asked me simply how I handle heavy weights. For him, he said, squatting much more than four plates feels like he’s dealing with a crushing amount of weight, especially in the hole, and pulling anything more than mid-400s feels intimidating in his hands when it breaks the ground. He was curious about how I seem so nonchalant when handling 500+, and how I keep progressing even when the weights feel heavy. I gave him some basic advice about exercise selection (partials and supermaximal holds can help confidence under weight, and paused squats can make you feel much more comfortable in the hole when you squat heavy), and then also explained the truly important change that needed to be made.

Everyone knows the illustration of moving a goldfish to a larger and larger bowl. Keep it in a little bowl, and it will stay small. Move it to a larger bowl, and it will grow. Put it in a pond, and it will grow even more. You’re that fish, and your bowl is how wide you cast your gaze (metaphor time!). If you want to be the strongest guy in your gym, that’s great. Not a bad place to start, but also a pretty lousy end goal. Unless you train at a true barbell club with multiple world-class lifters, in the weightroom of a college or professional sports team, etc., being the strongest person in the gym is pretty meaningless. You’ve simply become the biggest fish in a tiny fish bowl.

Bench 315 in most gyms, and people will “oo” and “ah.” Squat five plates and people will be astounded. That’s one of the worst things that can possibly happen. You see, you’ve cast your gaze pretty narrowly. You’ve become the top dog. If you’re the strongest person in the whole gym, there must be a reason everyone else isn’t as strong as you. You must be pretty darn strong. How much stronger can you get? It’s hard to say exactly, but probably not much. You’re the strongest person at your gym, after all. You’re even stronger than that one guy who uses prohormones (or, *gasp,* a low dose of test from time to time). It’s going to be difficult moving forward, to further cement your place as king of the hill.

Cast your gaze wider than that. Let’s say you weigh about 180 – an average-sized dude. Men your size have squatted 710, benched 556, and pulled 791. So much for your amazing *cough* lifts. Congratulations. You’ve cast yourself from a tiny fish bowl into an ocean. You’ve gone from being the biggest fish to being a painfully average-sized fish – which is exactly what you should want.

I honestly think newbie gains are 50% physical and 50% mental. Sure, they have a lot of untapped potential for growth, but they’re also mentally playing “catch up” with everyone around them. Here’s an experiment I’d like to do some day: Take two groups of new lifters and put them both on the same training program. One group trains in a commercial gym or lab setting, and the other trains in a collegiate football weightroom – when the team is actually lifting. I almost guarantee the second group gets significantly stronger on the exact same program. All over the Internet, you see people talk about finally squatting 315 or benching 225. It happens at the gym I train at when I’m in school. At a barbell club, doing either of those things means, “Congratulations. You’re a non-midget who just hit puberty. Pretty productive for your first 2 months of training. Now let’s work toward something that’s ACTUALLY worth bragging about.”

When you broaden your gaze – throw yourself into the ocean – it sets you up to get stronger again, very quickly. Odds are, if you’re taking the time to read this, you probably have been training for a while and you think of yourself as pretty strong. You’re the strongest (or at least one of the strongest) of your friends. You can show up most people in your gym. You’d probably beat most of the people at a state powerlifting meet. Forget it all. How would you do head-to-head against Ed Coan in his prime? Or Lamar Gant? Or Dan Green? Or Andre Malanichev? Until you can honestly tell yourself that you’d be competitive (maybe not win, but at least be mentioned in the same sentence), you’re not strong. The sooner you can get that through your head, the better.

Everyone knows about diminishing returns in the gym. The stronger you are, the harder it is to continue getting stronger. Until you’re at least kind of strong to begin with, though, gains come naturally. The longer you can delay your assessment of yourself as a strong individual, the better off you are. When people tell me I’m strong, I usually bluntly deny it. It’s not feigned humility – a practice I have no respect for. It’s the truth. I really don’t see myself as very strong. Not yet, at least. Travis Mash, my first mentor, has squatted 804lbs, benched 550lbs, and deadlifted 804lbs raw. Right now, that’s strong to me. Until I take down each of those, I’m not strong in that particular lift. Once that happens, Coan’s records are my next target, my next standard.

Will it happen? We’ll see. Objectively, it’s quite unlikely, but I wouldn’t keep training if I didn’t see it as a possibility. As useful as it is to avoid hubris (the whole point of this discussion), it’s also important to avoid doubt. So what if you widen your gaze, but doing so makes you throw up your hands and say “I don’t have a chance”? No matter how crazy the goal, you have to entertain it as a possibility. Imagine young Dorian Yates:

Needs more Cell-Tech

What if he told you his dream of becoming Mr. Olympia? You’d laugh at him. And you’d have looked like a fool for doing so in hindsight.

Luckily, as corny as it may sound, HE believed he could do it, and ultimately that’s what mattered.

People who follow my writing will recognize this as a variation on a theme I like to bring up fairly frequently: You limit yourself by having low expectations. To bring this full circle and to tie it back into the original metaphor: Throw yourself into the biggest ocean there is. You may never become the biggest fish, but only by venturing there do you find out just how large of a fish you can become.

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About Greg Nuckols

Greg Nuckols has over a decade of experience under the bar, a BS in Exercise and Sports Science, and a Master's in Exercise Physiology. He’s held 3 all-time world records in powerlifting in the 220 and 242 classes.

He’s trained hundreds of athletes and regular folks, both online and in-person. He’s written for many of the major magazines and websites in the fitness industry, including Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Bodybuilding.com, T-Nation, and Schwarzenegger.com. Furthermore, he’s had the opportunity to work with and learn from numerous record holders, champion athletes, and collegiate and professional strength and conditioning coaches through his previous job as Chief Content Director for Juggernaut Training Systems and current full-time work here on Stronger By Science.

His passions are making complex information easily understandable for athletes, coaches, and fitness enthusiasts, helping people reach their strength and fitness goals, and drinking great beer.